Pope Leo XIV on May 25 released his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” at the Vatican’s Synod Hall — and seated a few chairs down from him was Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, who had been invited to address the gathering. In his speech, Olah called for outside voices — religious, civil, governmental — to scrutinize AI development, arguing that labs including Anthropic operate under commercial pressures that can conflict with doing the right thing. He outlined three areas where the Church’s voice was specifically needed: supporting workers displaced by AI at scale, ensuring that AI use promotes human flourishing rather than harm, and examining what is actually happening inside AI models. On that last point, Olah was unusually candid: “We keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling. We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience. We find evidence of introspection,” he said, hinting at unresolved questions about machine consciousness. The pope thanked Olah personally and pledged to work together to “find a way for humanity in this time of artificial intelligence.”
The pairing of a 33-year-old self-described atheist AI researcher with the head of the Catholic Church in front of a packed auditorium of cardinals and theologians prompted widespread jokes online that Pope Leo had joined Anthropic “as a member of technical staff.” A Vatican official acknowledged the invitation was unusual and said it signaled how seriously Leo intends to engage with the technology sector. Anthropic’s longstanding focus on AI safety has placed it closer to the Vatican’s stance — that AI must be “disarmed” — than rivals such as Amazon, Google, and Meta, all of which are separately lobbying the Holy See for closer collaboration. The encyclical is the first major papal teaching document dedicated to artificial intelligence.